Out of Darkness
by BlueWeimi
Summary: Bella is sent to live with her father as a result of her self-destructive behavior. The only thing that has kept her from going over the edge is a series of dreams that she has been having about a mysterious boy.
1. Chapter 1

A/N

This is my first attempt at fan fiction (or any creative writing for that matter). I'm new to this whole concept, but thought it was extremely cool, and have really enjoyed a lot of the stories that I have read here. As it may become obvious, I love angst. This story may end up being a little dark…

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He came to me in my dream again.

The dreams were usually the same. They would start out as an abstract mix of muted colors of greens, blues and browns, broken by shadows of gray and black. The swirling mix had an unsettling familiarity to them, which would give me an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I also felt uneasy since this was usually the point in which the boy-god would appear. His features had no familiarity, he resembled no one I knew, but I would see him with such clarity it suggested I had known him for ages. Maybe it was from a past life? I doubted it since I didn't put any credibility in such notions. I also doubted it because he was absolutely flawless. Surely such a perfect creature could not truly exist. But in spite of his beauty, it was the depth of sadness and pain in his gaze that drew me in. He never spoke in my dreams; the intensity in his eyes said everything. They were imploring, beseeching, begging me to help him as he reached out towards me. And I always reached out to him, too. I wanted to help him, to sooth his pain. I knew such pain; and this knowledge drove my urgency to reach him, to sooth him, as if soothing him would sooth me in return. But I never could reach him in my dreams. At this point, as I did this morning, I would always awaken before our fingers could touch, face wet with tears, feeling hollow and cold. The dreams haunted me, but trying to decipher them was a welcome distraction from my own misery. I didn't need to seek out numbness while I thought of him.

I opened my eyes with a sigh and turned over to look at the alarm clock. 3:35am. Fuck. I still had 4 hours before I needed to get up. I squinted into the darkness, willing my eyes to adjust. Along my bedroom wall, neatly aligned was my packed suitcase and duffle bag. I sighed again. I wasn't looking forward to the flight to Washington, to my new existence with the father I felt I barely knew. He had always been around in the background, but 2 weeks visitation in the summer with the odd holiday or birthday thrown in between could barely qualify us as a close knit family. The time we did spend together, especially in the last couple years was always interspersed with an awkward tension. I couldn't blame Renee, my mother, too much for her exasperated decision to send me to live with my father. On some levels she really had tried. But in her frustration with my self-destructive behavior, she had announced that she was sending me to live with my father, Charlie, who was the chief of police for the tiny town of Forks, Washington. A town so gloomy and sunless that it matched on the outside what my soul reflected on the inside. And when it came down to it, I didn't care. I really couldn't bring myself to care about anything anymore. I think on some levels she also felt guilty, responsible for my state. Her flighty, free-flowing nature had not been disapproving as I fell in with the wrong crowd in Phoenix. As I drank and partied wildly with my friends on the weekends. As weekends turned into weekdays. As I experimented with drugs. The final straw had been my expulsion from high school, the result from a lengthy string of truancies wracked up while stumbling around in a numb haze. It was this haze that I sought out with all of my waking hours that weren't spent contemplating my strange dream. I reached into the drawer of my nightstand and took a long pull of the bottle that I had stashed in there. This was likely going to be my last drink; Charlie was unlikely to tolerate this type of behavior. I closed my eyes as the fiery liquid burned the back of my throat. I was going to miss that burn.

As I blankly stared out the window of the 737, I knew that I could never tell Renee that she was partly responsible for my downward spiral that started just over 3 years ago. That her own hard partying ways had brought in the strange man that would alter my path forever. I shouldered more of the blame. I had always felt like the adult, like the parent, the responsible one in the relationship I had with Renee, and I was very drunk when I stumbled into the house on that fateful evening and found him drinking at the kitchen table. Too drunk and scared of waking Renee that I didn't fight him off as his hands groped roughly and his hot breath that reeked of alcohol flooded my senses as he licked my face from chin to hairline. I shuddered, trying to drive the images out of my head and regain my sense of reality. I absentmindedly fingered the faint pink scars that circled my wrist and ran up my arm, another one of my manifestations of self-loathing. No, I could never tell her. She had been trying so hard to clean up her life, and had been increasingly successful in straightening herself out since she had met Phil, the steadiest relationship she had since she divorced my dad over 16 years ago. As she cleaned up, I slipped further into the abyss. I couldn't risk tipping her balance back to the dark side. She was finally aware enough to realize that I was not right, but I couldn't talk to her, and she was frustrated by her new found sense of parental responsibility. So I didn't fight, didn't argue when she made the announcement that she was sending me to live with my father. The plane began hurtling down the runway, jarring my thoughts back to the present tense. My buzz from this morning was starting to wear off. I closed my eyes and tensed up as the wheels of the plane left the tarmac. As the pain started to creep in around my renewed sense of clarity, I wished I were old enough to purchase the lovely little bottles of alcohol that the flight attendants possessed, or bold enough to have tried to smuggle something of my own onto the flight. All I could do was think about the boy that haunted my dreams; focus on his face and expressive eyes, distracting myself momentarily from the painful thoughts and memories that presided when the numbness did not. I drifted off into an uneasy sleep as the plane hit maximum altitude.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**

**Disclaimer – Stephenie Meyer owns all that is Twilight. I own the pair of broken down Ascics I used to pound out this chapter in my head.**

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My eyes flew open, startled awake from the jarring impact of tires making contact with cement as the plane touched down. I leaned my head back in the seat and rubbed my eyes, although I had slept, my rest had been dreamless and unsatisfying. Begrudgingly, I stood up from my seat and waited for my turn so that I could grab my duffle and make exit off of the plane. I really didn't enjoy flying; the only times I've flown were for the court prescribed visits to see my father, so there were never any fond memories to attach. The fact that I was stone cold sober and sporting a pretty decent dehydration induced headache wasn't helping either. I slowly made my way off the plane and on to the jet way, keeping my eyes down and not looking at the flight attendants as I shuffled past ,catching my toe and stumbling midway down the aisle. The mildew-y smell of the greater northwest assaulted my senses as I made my way into the airport. I hated it already.

I could see Charlie nervously fidgeting in the crowd of people surrounding the baggage carousel as I made my way down the escalator. His appearance really hadn't changed much over the years…maybe a little more gray peppered in his dark brown hair, forehead a little longer, a few more creases around his eyes – which became even more creased from his smile as he spotted me stepping off the escalator. He still sported the same stereotypical cop 'stash that he had since as far back as I could remember.

"Hey Bells, how was your flight?" Charlie raised his arms to give me a hug, which I eyed suspiciously. This obviously made him uncertain, as he dropped his arms, fidgeted some more, and then decided on a one armed hug, a mix between squeezing and patting my right shoulder. _Awkward._ We had never done the father-daughter thing very well.

"I made it here, didn't I?" my tone was a little gruff, and I was surprised by the twinge of guilt that I felt for that. I really needed to do something about this headache. I was relieved when I spotted my suitcase, grateful for the opportunity to create some space between Charlie and me as I dashed off to grab it.

"Where are you parked?" I asked, really not looking forward to the next four plus hours we would be spending in Charlie's police cruiser on the drive from Seattle to Forks. I could've taken a connection directly into the tiny Forks airport, or into the slightly larger Port Angeles, but there was no fucking way you were getting me on one of those puddle-jumpers. "On level four of the parking garage. Here, let me grab that" he reached out and took the suitcase from me. The rest of our walk to the cruiser was silent, and I could easily feel the tension between us. My stomach twisted uneasily as Charlie loaded my suitcase and duffle bag into the trunk. Even though Charlie was not known to be very verbose, four hours gave him a lot of opportunity to rip into me on getting expelled from high school back in Phoenix and I knew he was pissed. Maybe I would get lucky; Charlie typically took the 'Ignorance is Bliss' approach to myself and Renee. Unsure of how much Renee had actually told him, I could feel a thin sheen of nervous sweat building on my forehead, aided in part by the stifling humidity. I really wasn't sure how this trip to his house in Forks was going to go.

"OK, Bells, we need to talk" I continued to look out the window, my mouth twisted into a slight grimace. I really was not ready to do this. I carefully constructed my armor.

"Really, Charlie? You want to do this now? Play father-daughter?" Charlie winced from my verbal slap, but didn't say anymore. I turned my head to stare out the window again; the view a blur of green and brown of trees merging onto a solid mass as the cruiser passed. It looked like I had one this battle, but I didn't feel any victory.

We quietly ignored each other for the rest of the trip. I pretended to be all consumed with my iPhone, but I noticed every time Charlie glanced over at me, and every time he opened and then shut his mouth, obviously undecided on what to say.

Charlie pulled the cruiser up in front of the simple A-frame where I had spent my earliest years and a few weeks every summer after that. He looked over towards me, I think sensing his last opportunity to talk to me as a captive audience, and cleared his throat. "Look Bella, I'll admit I haven't been the most attentive father, but I can't ignore this or pretend like nothing has happened. You got yourself expelled from school for Christ's sake! You're a smart kid…I didn't think that you were the kind of kid to get herself kicked out of school." My cheeks burned in discomfort. "I really don't know what kind of kid I am" I barely whispered, looking down at my hands.

"I have to admit, as disappointed as I am about what happened in Phoenix, I am glad that you are here, Bells. But there are going to be rules that I expect you to follow. You have to go to school. No drinking. No drugs. And no boys." I rolled my eyes at his last stipulation. "You don't have to worry about that, Charlie. Are we done here? I really like to get my shit inside so that I can hit the sack…I'm exhausted." Charlie hesitated, then nodded gruffly, getting out of the cruiser and walking towards the trunk to retrieve my suitcase. I followed suit, grabbing my duffle bag out of the trunk and following Charlie up the stairs to the front door. Charlie unlocked the door and walked into the house, but I hesitated, my legs seemingly unwilling to move. I took a deep breath, and stepped into a childhood memory.

"_Look daddy, I drew a picture of you fishing with Uncle Billy_" I beamed, waving a piece of paper in my chubby 7 year old fingers with two crudely drawn stick figures standing in a bright red rowboat, each figure holding what resembled a fish. "_That's great Bella, you are a regular Picasso!_" Charlie had grinned at me, taking the picture over to the fridge and sticking it under a magnet so that it could join the others.

I snapped back to reality at the sound of Charlie clearing his throat. I looked over to where he stood in the kitchen, next to a fridge that was bare of any decoration. I couldn't help but wonder when and how everything had seemed to go so wrong.

I flopped down on the bed where I have slept ever summer, not even havening the energy to change out of my clothes or unpack. I picked up my pillow and buried my head under it, trying to block out all the noise in my head and willing myself to sleep so that I could dream about my boy, the dream that has eluded my since my last night in Phoenix. I wished that I had something to drink, or something that I could take to numb my brain. I flipped over on to my back in frustration. I was exhausted, but at the same time I couldn't get my head to stop buzzing so that I could fall asleep. I tried to force my muscles to stretch and relax, tried thinking of a blank page, but nothing was working. I felt edgy, my legs twitching and restless like when you force yourself to stay awake way too long. But I wasn't forcing myself, in fact I wanted nothing more than the opposite. After trying to lie still for some time, I growled in frustration and rolled my self out of bed, stumbling on the carpet as I made my way out into the hallway and into the sole bathroom that I would now be sharing with Charlie. The thought of that made my scowl increase even more. I scoured the shelves of the medicine cabinet, intent on finding something that I could put to good use. My eyes settled on a bottle of NyQuil. _That'll do_, I thought. I twisted off the cap and took a couple of long pulls from the bottle. I went to put the cap back on, shrugged instead and took another pull for good measure. I placed the NyQuil back into the medicine cabinet, moving other bottles in front of so that Charlie wouldn't notice that about half the bottle was now gone. I went back to my room and laid down on the bed and closed my eyes, waiting for my medicine to kick in.


End file.
